One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez-if more people read Garcia Marquez, the world would be a better place. This is easily the best book ever written. Seriously, this book is so magical and fantastic and wonderful. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me a better person.

This one is definitely top ten of all time for me.

At the moment, I'm busy with schoolwork to a degree that casual reading has become difficult, although I'm currently reading Naseua by Sartre during my down time.

Best book on politics/campaigning/elections that Ive read thus far - Theodore H White's Making of the President, 1960. His 'Making Ofs' get progressively weaker after that. Hunter Thompson's '72 book is an almost equal work of brilliance...a look inside the campaign universe, some keen observations, and hilarious eviscerations of Nixon/Humphrey/Muskie.

I only read White's book on the 1968 campaign. How is the 1960 book superior?

White was guilty as charged when some critics said he had a hero-worship thing going on with JFK. This attitude definitly had an impact on White's writing as his descriptions of Kennedy were some of the best pieces of political prose Ive ever read. Also, Nixon was not as testy with reporters at the time and thus White had better access to him in '60 then in '68 (though White presumabley had more time with Nixon in 1968 than the average writer). Both '60 and '68 were very dramatic campaigns/elections with intriguing storylines...albeit for different reasons. In my opinion, White's '68 book has a huge problem with his lack of understanding/empathy towards the youth/college/peace movement...this is exemplified by his use of the word 'youngsters' to basically discredit a large bloc of people in the pages leading up to his description of the Chicago riot. For better descriptions/analysis of the Chi riot see the American Melodrama book (with pretty good coverage by its Brittish authors) and Hunter S Thompson's '72 book (where he describes being assaulted in 1968 by the Daley Gestapo).

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez-if more people read Garcia Marquez, the world would be a better place. This is easily the best book ever written. Seriously, this book is so magical and fantastic and wonderful. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me a better person.

This one is definitely top ten of all time for me.

At the moment, I'm busy with schoolwork to a degree that casual reading has become difficult, although I'm currently reading Naseua by Sartre during my down time.

"Camus can do, but Satre is smartre!" Yeah, people should read Camus, too. There's not enough Camus going on these days.

I'm currently reading The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, and after that I'll be reading through Make Your Own Damn Movie by Lloyd Kaufman.

Kaufman's first "instructional" book, All I Needed To Learn About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger, was pretty damn solid. Talked a lot about his personal life, namely his complete adoration of his two daughters and his wife, and how much independent cinema means to him. Talks about the hardships of making independent movies and distributing them, especially gore and smut-laden pieces like his, and how if you make likeable characters the movie itself could be a piece of shit but you'll have a fanbase. He also went into detail about creating The Toxic Avenger with Michael Herz (originally entitled Health Club Hell or something very similar) and how it was meant to be a straight-up horror movie touching on nuclear waste and society's constant emphasis on personal fitness, but then how the idea came to make the monster (Toxie) the hero rather than the villain. Pretty good read.

Last pure novel I finished, outside of Tietam Brown (yeah, fuck you Edwin, I dug it because of how Foley made both Browns likeable, even loveable to a point, but with extremely dark sides), was probably American Psycho. Not Ellis' best, though it is his most well-known, but I'd have to say his best would be either The Rules of Attraction (which is something that I have a feeling a lot of people could relate to, at least to certain aspects) or Glamorama. Haven't caught his new one yet, or The Informers, but I read some of Less Than Zero and wasn't too impressed.

I agree with the pro-Camus sentiments. I don't feel that it's an extremely interesting plotline, as much as it's an extremely interesting set of ideas proposed through a moderately interesting story, as opposed to something like Ayn Rand, which is a series of half-baked, heavy-handed set of ideas presented through a poorly thought out and lackluster story. Going back to Camus, I prefer The Fall to The Stranger, but if you're just starting out, The Strangeris probably a better bet.

Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? by Edward Albee: a highly bizarre and disturbing play about various things. Albee was actually a guest professor for several years at University of Houston, but I, not being a Theatre major didn't ever get to partake in any of his classes.

Oh, and I'd like to recommend some more stuff in addition to the stuff I just recommended, because I like recommending things because it makes me feel important...

Anything by Don Delillo, specifically his earlier output

Music for Torching by A.M. Homes-a highly disturbing book about suburban strife written by a female with a very wicked and dark sense of humor.

Do to my university work I don't have as much time for reading fiction stuff as I'd like, but thankfully due to the topics of the essays I'm working on I've managed to squeeze in some stuff that I've been wanting to read for a while, specifically Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, which was just as fascinating as I'd hoped. For those not familiar with it, it's essentially about the reality of fiction, shortcomings of theatre and other things of that nature.

Currently I'm reading Louis Aragon's Paris Peasant. It's very enjoyable thus far (I'm about halfway through it), even if it isn't, thus far, quite as intoxicating a read as André Breton's Nadja.

Though it was written in 1989, it holds up frighteningly well in its exploration of the excesses of the federal government. It's presumptuous to say it'll turn you into a libertarian just from reading it--psh yeah like anyone can convert NoCalMike or CheesalaIsGood--but if nothing else it would give liberals and neoconservatives an idea of where we're coming from here on the "we can't possibly need all this government" thing. (Particularly worth reading is the chapter on agricultural policy.) Though it's certainly right-of-center, P.J. is enough of a renegade to dish it out equally to both sides, an approach that he is justified in taking for more than a self-imposed fairness doctrine: the Republicans are just as bad at expanding this hulking behemoth, with the insult-to-injury factor of professing how they'll do the opposite when it's time to elect them. He makes good points without being hamfisted, oh, and yeah, he's really funny. I'm assuming a good handful of us have already read this one, but in case you haven't, pick it up, by all means.

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte: One of my all-time favourites. Very compelling stuff, beautifully written. Just don't expect to like any of the characters.

Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes: not actually a novel, but a collection of poetry chronicling Hughes' and Plath's life together. Some of the poems dealing with Plath's suicide are just stunning.

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy: a surprise inclusion - I wasn't expecting to like this book when I first picked it up for one of my uni classes, turns out I loved it. McCarthy's descriptive language is sublime.

I hate Wuthering with a passion, I think it was the first book I actually fell asleep trying to read. If we're going old school, I like the Sherlock Holmes short stories, haven't checked out the novels yet. I also really like Dracula and Frankenstein, Books on Tape has a great version of the later yu can probably get out of any decent library or their network

Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes: not actually a novel, but a collection of poetry chronicling Hughes' and Plath's life together. Some of the poems dealing with Plath's suicide are just stunning.

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy: a surprise inclusion - I wasn't expecting to like this book when I first picked it up for one of my uni classes, turns out I loved it. McCarthy's descriptive language is sublime.

I can't read anything by Ted Hughes because the whiny emo girl in me loves Sylvia Plath too much to not think of him as an adulterous, chauvinistic prick.

I second the Corman McCarthy recommendation. I had an English professor a couple of semesters ago that was really into McCarthy and we read "Pretty Horses". The language is stunning. It takes some adjusting, but it's well worth it. I haven't read the other two books in the trilogy, but I plan to...at some point.

Do to my university work I don't have as much time for reading fiction stuff as I'd like, but thankfully due to the topics of the essays I'm working on I've managed to squeeze in some stuff that I've been wanting to read for a while, specifically Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, which was just as fascinating as I'd hoped. For those not familiar with it, it's essentially about the reality of fiction, shortcomings of theatre and other things of that nature.

If you dug that, try Pirandello's Henry IV. More of the same, but even more confusing and weird.

I can't read anything by Ted Hughes because the whiny emo girl in me loves Sylvia Plath too much to not think of him as an adulterous, chauvinistic prick.

Understandable. The fact that Hughes was an adulterous prick does dettract from the book a little, and probably holds it back from being considered a work of amazing poetry. It also makes you question Hughes' agenda in writing some of the poems.

Last night I started and finished Tales of Adam by Daniel Quinn. A quick jaunt at 92 pages (including illustrations), but it is a nice 'wrapping up' of his philosophies that were underlying in his first three books (Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael), told through Adam as he teaches his son Abel how to be a hunter and to live as an adult in the world.

My next read...probably Ian McEwan's Saturday as I started it and have yet to get back into it.

Pretty... Fucked up book I guess. Didn't care too much for the ending, but it was a general quick read. It's about an abusive Aunt who keeps her teen neices in a basement. She uh, like totally fucks this girl up though. Anybody read it?

Anyone who hasn't read Solzhenitzyn's The Gulag Archipelago: Volume One, 1918-1956 is really missing out on some fascinating historical material. I, for one, find the Russian Revolution and particularly Stalin's reign as one of the most fascinating periods in history, period, and hearing a firsthand account of the prison system and its horrors really makes you do a double take whenever you hear someone call Hitler the worst dictator of all time. I haven't been able to completely get through it yet (the first volume alone is over 600 pages), but I plan on getting through the whole thing (plus the second volume, if I can find it) by the end of the year.

Anyone who hasn't read Solzhenitzyn's The Gulag Archipelago: Volume One, 1918-1956 is really missing out on some fascinating historical material. I, for one, find the Russian Revolution and particularly Stalin's reign as one of the most fascinating periods in history, period, and hearing a firsthand account of the prison system and its horrors really makes you do a double take whenever you hear someone call Hitler the worst dictator of all time. I haven't been able to completely get through it yet (the first volume alone is over 600 pages), but I plan on getting through the whole thing (plus the second volume, if I can find it) by the end of the year.

I had a Soviet cinema professor who liked to talk about everything good that Stalin did, but really downplayed all the genocides and political assassinations and so forth. It was borderline creepy. Did she think we already knew that shit and needed to hear the other side? I doubt it, since like you said, if people knew, more people would be putting Stalin ahead(?) of Hitler.

Naked - David Sedaris

I'm kind of sleepy right now, I'm not in the mood to synopsize this one myself. I will resort to plagiarism.

QUOTE(Library Journal)

Sedaris (Barrel Fever, LJ 5/1/94) has fashioned a funny memoir of his wonderfully offbeat life. To call his family "dysfunctional" would be enormous understatement and beside the point; Sedaris's relatives and other companions become vital characters on the page. We see his mother serving drinks to the string of teachers who want to discuss her son's compulsions to lick light switches and make high-pitched noises. We travel with Sedaris and his quadriplegic hitchhiking companion, listen to his foul-mouthed seat mate on a long bus trip, and accompany the author on a hilariously self-conscious visit to a nudist colony. Sedaris's humor is wickedly irreverent but not mean. Traveling with him is well worth it for the laughs and his generous human sensibility.

Whatever. He's gay and Greek and grew up in North Carolina. Recipe for awkward adolescent anecdotes. How 'bout that alliteration.

Would you agree with my earlier assessment that people who think The Da Vinci Code is a brilliant work, rather than another middlebrow potboiler, are some of the most tragically uncompelling people around?

Nice to know other people around here sometimes read regular old fashioned fun fiction, or I assume Da Vinci was meant to be fun, I haven't touched it. I'm ever so slowly making my way through the Pillars of Creation by Terry Goodkind, a fantasy book